Ohio Lt. Governor Called Racist For Supporting Cuahoga County Reform Ballot Measure Opposed By Black Leaders, NAACP

Ohio Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher
Ohio State Representative Barbara Boyd
U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge
Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes
Retired U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason
Posted Thursday, October 29, 2009
(National and Cleveland, Ohio Area News)


By Kathy Wray Coleman
(Editor of The Determiner Weekly and
The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog
and Media Network)



Ohio Democratic Lt. Governor Lee Fisher, who is Jewish, has been branded racist by bloggers on the Plain Dealer News Paper's online forum after yesterday announcing his support of Issue 6, a Cuyahoga County reform measure on the November ballot.

The county charter revision proposal is opposed by practically every prominent Black leader from Ohio's largest county, including U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-11, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes and Black Women's Political Action Committee President and Ohio Rep. Barbara Boyd, D-9. If adopted by voters it would strip voters of their own right to elect nine of the 11 non-judicial county offices and replace them with an elected 11 member county council and an elected county head. The offices at issue are the county sheriff, engineer, coroner, recorder, auditor and three commissioners. The treasurer and county prosecutor, the two positions not among those targeted by Issue 6, would remain elected offices. Currently, all of the 11 offices, including that of the prosecutor, are held by Democrats, a posture that has caused some Republican office hopefuls unpopular to county voters to push for Issue 6.

“Lee Fisher is a racist. Issue 6 will equally [unequally] distribute power across the county,” wrote one blogger in response to Fisher's endorsement of the divisive measure.

“That seals it for me,” another blogger wrote in response to the aforementioned comment.

Fisher, who will face Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner for the May primary in hopes of winning the Democratic Party's nomination for U.S. Senator, said he endorsed Issue 6 because he was disappointed that the issue and a competing ballot measure dubbed Issue 5 had polarized leaders and others in the community. Issue 5, backed by many opposing Issue 6, including Black leaders and Cleveland's Call and Post Newspaper, a weekly that targets the Black community, asks voters to permit an elected 15-member committee to study county reform and make revision recommendations to voters in 2010.

If voters adopt issue 6 on election day next Tuesday they would vote for the 11 county council members in their respective districts and the head executive in a later scheduled election. Black leaders, including Boyd, have said that Issue 6 was crafted by county prosecutor Bill Mason and a team of all White Democrats without Black input and that the 11 separate county districts, including districts that encompass the city of Cleveland, were derived by Mason and others through a gerrymandering process that ensures that only one of the 11 seats can be won by a Black.

“The districts were gerrymandered without input from Black leaders,” said Boyd, a Cleveland Heights, Oh. Democrat.

Gerrymandering is a form of redistricting in which constituency boundaries are deliberately modified for electoral purposes. If its outcome serves to disenfranchise Black voters by limiting Black leadership relative to the elected offices at hand it could possibly violate the National Voting Rights Act of 1965 and constitutional law. Originally the 21st Congressional District before it was redrawn in 1990, the 11th congressional district, which includes Cleveland and many of its eastern suburbs, was once gerrymandered from a predominantly Black district to a predominantly White one but subsequently rescued with the help of the Cleveland Chapter NAACP and retired U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes, then a local lawyer for the Civil Rights organization.

“My brother Carl was an Ohio State legislator at the time and the 21th Congressional District had been been realigned through gerrymandering from a predominantly Black congressional district to a majority White congressional district,” said Stokes, who opposes Issue 6, in an interview last year. “As a result of the activity a White congressman named Charles Vanik was elected as the congressman.”

The pathway to victory, however, did not come without a fight, said Stokes, now an attorney with the Cleveland office law firm of Squire, Sanders and Dempsey. The lower court ruled against the NAACP in the case that was docketed as Lucas vs. Ohio. It eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court and in 1967 the high court ordered the Ohio State Legislature to realign the 21th Congressional District under the watch of the Federal District Court of the Northern District of Ohio, thereby recreating a predominantly Black congressional district.

That was the same year, he added, that his brother, the late Carl B. Stokes, was elected mayor of the city of Cleveland, where he made history as the first Black mayor of a major metropolitan city.

“When I spoke with Carl he said he wanted to remain as mayor and the NAACP recommended that I run for congress in the newly aligned 21th Congressional District.” said Stokes. “My candidacy was supported by W.O Walker, the former publisher of the Call and Post Newspapers.”

Stokes accepted the challenge and was elected to the congressional seat in 1968, a seat that he would hold for 30 years until his retirement in 1998. The 21th Congressional District would be realigned two times thereafter, eventually becoming the 11th Congressional District, which is now roughly 53 percent Black.

With Stokes' support Stephanie Tubbs Jones was elected as the first Black female congresswoman from Ohio in 1998. She died of a brain aneurysm in August 2008 and Fudge, a former chief of staff to Tubbs Jones in Congress and then the mayor of Warrensville, Heights, Oh., was elected to the position.

Like Boyd, Forbes, a former Cleveland City Council President and long term president of the Cleveland Chapter NAACP, has challenged Issue 6 as “ not good for Black folks.”

The Cuyahoga County Democratic Party agreed. Members of its executive committee voted against Issue 6 and for Issue 5 at a meeting earlier this month following heated debate where Black leaders spoke against it, including Fudge, who said that Mason and his Issue 6 team crafted the measure “in the closet.”

Mason has remained steadfast in promoting Issue 6 and telling voters that it would help county residents of all races by creating jobs and ridding the county of at risk corruption. His campaign in support of the ballot issue is not without momentum. Big business quickly jumped aboard and has funded television ads that promote the controversial measure as allegedly good for Cuyahoga County.

Though branded racist by some for his support of Issue 6 Fisher was not without support from bloggers of the Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper.

“How is he racist? I hope power is spread across the county,” a blogger countered.“Lee Fisher will make a good Senator from Ohio,” commented another.

Blogs are online venues that permit readers and others to share their passions for writing including commentary in response to articles in online news magazines such as the Plain Dealer, which also has a paper format that has similar and identical news.

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